Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible • Hacker News Board

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#671

Post by untog » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #649

gridlockd wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's confusing. It's not 7 days of non-use , it's seven days of application use without visiting the site. Safari is one application, the homescreen app is a separate application. Presumably, all the alt browsers or WebView apps are separate applications as well. Since you can't use a homescreen app without visiting the site, the 7 days of not visiting the site can't happen.

So this is a requirement that all webapps phone home, moreover that they have a home to phone?

No, this is all internal to the browser, no requirement to send a remote request.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#672

Post by eyelidlessness » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

emmelaich wrote: post #638

gridlockd wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's confusing. It's not 7 days of non-use , it's seven days of application use without visiting the site. Safari is one application, the homescreen app is a separate application. Presumably, all the alt browsers or WebView apps are separate applications as well. Since you can't use a homescreen app without visiting the site, the 7 days of not visiting the site can't happen.

But .. if you don't use Safari for seven days, what happens?

From their description, nothing. Seven days of use without visiting triggers deletion. Failing to satisfy either of those conditions (either by disuse of Safari, or by visiting the site within seven days) doesn't.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#673

Post by Aaargh20318 » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

gridlockd wrote: post #547

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's basically impossible to make an app that can store its data locally, instead of on some web server. No, that is trivial to do: just make an actual damn application. What the author is complaining about is that it’s impossible to make a text document that pretends to be an application that stores data in ways they were never intended to be stored.

> What the author is complaining about is that it’s impossible to make a text document that pretends to be an application that stores data in ways they were never intended to be stored. You must've been not following things. The web platform is an application platform and has developed to that end, for many years. Progressive Web Apps are applications based on standard Web APIs that are designed with the intent to en…

> The web platform is an application platform and has developed to that end, for many years.

No it’s not. Using it like that is a lasagna of dirty hacks. The web is for structured text with hyperlinks, everything else is bullshit that doesn’t belong on the web.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#674

Post by eyelidlessness » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

iameli wrote: post #563

wubin wrote: post #483

The source clarifies that this only applies to websites run within the Safari browser.[1] PWAs added to the home screen aren't affected. > As mentioned, the seven-day cap on script-writable storage is gated on "after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site." That is the case in Safari. Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use…

"Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use. Their days of use will match actual use of the web application which resets the timer." But said timer... does nothing? Why does it exist?

Presumably because WebView is available to other applications besides Safari and pinned sites, and they want to offer the same privacy guarantees to users for WebViews in apps as for Safari. Adding an exception for pinned apps is unnecessary because it's impossible to meet the criteria for deletion.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#675

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #543

I ported Polar ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) over to a PWA about a year ago. It's kind of a nightmare due to both Google and Apple messing things up. PWAs could be an amazing platform but both companies are really messing it up. Apple is trying to kill them by giving plausible explanations as to why they can't have PWAs. Security this, blah blah blah. There's no reason they can't have PWAs work well in Safari other th…

[deleted]

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#676

Post by eyelidlessness » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

btown wrote: post #555

wubin wrote: post #483

The source clarifies that this only applies to websites run within the Safari browser.[1] PWAs added to the home screen aren't affected. > As mentioned, the seven-day cap on script-writable storage is gated on "after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site." That is the case in Safari. Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use…

If there is, as they say, a dedicated counter on those home screen applications, what is the threshold? Will home page PWA apps not used often (say, for infrequent uses like travel) have first party data deleted after the icon isn’t clicked for some time? This is highly unclear and confusing.

The deletion occurs if you use the app for seven days and don't visit the site. Pinned sites cannot meet those criteria and will not trigger deletion.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#677

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

rimliu wrote: post #592

untog wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A web app on the other hand is connected by definition, no? No, not in the era of "progressive web apps", which is really just a little bit of branding around interconnected APIs. The Cache API in particular means that a webapp can be downloaded and made available offline on a permanent basis. Unless it isn't actually permanent at all, which is what Apple are doing here. The web and the App Store are just delivery…

That's the same era as the "year of the Linux" desktop. I keep hearing "PWAs will win" for ten years now. Some people just want to use ill-fitted web tech everywhere, because that's all they know.

[deleted]

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#678

Post by jamiesonbecker » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

vosper wrote: post #577

burtonator wrote: post #543

I ported Polar ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) over to a PWA about a year ago. It's kind of a nightmare due to both Google and Apple messing things up. PWAs could be an amazing platform but both companies are really messing it up. Apple is trying to kill them by giving plausible explanations as to why they can't have PWAs. Security this, blah blah blah. There's no reason they can't have PWAs work well in Safari other th…

> There's no reason they can't have PWAs work well in Safari other than they want you to port your app to the App Store and get locked into their native APIs. Is it possible they also want you to port your app to the App Store to prevent an explosion of garbage and malware that could happen if PWAs really took off?

> to prevent an explosion of garbage and malware that could happen if PWAs really took off?

You mean, like the Internet. The App Store is a nice, safe walled garden, like AOL.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#679

Post by dzhiurgis » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

TheKarateKid wrote: post #323

cageface wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

moving forward we can expect Apple to start systemically hindering web apps They have been doing this for quite some time now. Always ostensibly to protect users but always also conveniently putting webapps at a permanent disadvantage to native apps. For my part I'm not interested in being a user of a platform so hostile to the web that it disallows any third party browsers.

> Always ostensibly to protect users but always also conveniently putting webapps at a permanent disadvantage to native apps. This isn't always a bad thing though. For example, Safari has prohibited some obnoxious behavior that Chrome has allowed: Autoplaying videos, tab suspension, push notifications. These hog CPU and destroy battery life, worsening the user experience. Remember, making everything a web app is Goog…

MacOS Safari autoplays YouTube videos with now way to disable...

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#680

Post by soapdog » Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

OP here, I just posted an update section on the post that touches some of the comments I've been seeing here. English is not my first language so I think that sometimes I don't make my ideas clear enough or well explained enough.